System and method for communicating with a virtual world

ABSTRACT

A system and method for communicating with a virtual world are disclosed. The virtual world may comprise a simulated public space configured to facilitate interaction among a plurality of users and one or more private spaces. Each private space may be associated with a particular user of the plurality of users. A particular user&#39;s interactions with the virtual world may be represented by one or more corresponding actions of an avatar. A communication device may be simulated in the virtual world. Communication may take place between the simulated communication device and a real communication device. The virtual world may be generated by one or more processors configured to simulate a communication device in the virtual world and communicate between the simulated communication device and a real communication device.

CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATION

This application claims the benefit of priority of commonly-assigned,co-pending United Kingdom patent application no. ______, entitled“ENTERTAINMENT DEVICE”, filed Mar. 1, 2007, the entire disclosures ofwhich are incorporated herein by reference.

This application claims the benefit of priority of co-pending U.S.Provisional patent application No. 60/892.397, entitled “VIRTUAL WORLDCOMMUNICATION SYSTEMS AND METHODS”, filed Mar. 1, 2007, the entiredisclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______, to Tomas Gillo et al., entitled “SYSTEM ANDMETHOD FOR ROUTING COMMUNICATIONS AMONG REAL AND VIRTUAL COMMUNICATIONDEVICES”, attorney docket no. SCEA0701JDI02 filed Mar. 5, 2007, theentire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______, to Tomas Gillo et al., entitled “SYSTEM ANDMETHOD FOR COMMUNICATING WITH AN AVATAR”, attorney docket no.SCEA0701JDI03 filed Mar. 5, 2007, the entire disclosures of which areincorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______, to Tomas Gillo et al., entitled “MAPPINGUSER EMOTIONAL STATE TO AVATAR IN A VIRTUAL WORLD”, attorney docket no.SCEA0701JDI04 filed Mar. 5, 2007, the entire disclosures of which areincorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______, to Tomas Gillo et al., entitled “AVATARCUSTOMIZATION”, attorney docket no. SCEA0701JDI05 filed Mar. 5, 2007,the entire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. ______, entitled “AVATAR EMAIL AND METHODS FORCOMMUNICATING BETWEEN REAL AND VIRTUAL WORLDS”, attorney docket no.SCEA0701JDI06 filed Mar. 5, 2007, the entire disclosures of which areincorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending UnitedKingdom patent application no. ______, entitled “ENTERTAINMENT DEVICEAND METHOD”, (attorney docket no. P028336GB) filed Mar. 5, 2007, theentire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending UnitedKingdom patent application no. ______, entitled “ENTERTAINMENT DEVICEAND METHOD”, (attorney docket no. P028337GB) filed Mar. 5, 2007, theentire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending UnitedKingdom patent application no. ______, entitled “ENTERTAINMENT DEVICEAND METHOD”, (attorney docket no. P028338GB) filed Mar. 5, 2007, theentire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

This application is related to commonly-assigned, co-pending UnitedKingdom patent application no. ______, entitled “ENTERTAINMENT DEVICEAND METHOD”, (attorney docket no. P028379GB) filed Mar. 5, 2007, theentire disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

FIELD OF THE INVENTION

This invention is related to interactive computer entertainment and morespecifically to communication among users of a virtual world.

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION

A virtual world is a simulated environment in which users may interactwith each other via one or more computer processors. Users may appear ona video screen in the form of representations referred to as avatars.The degree of interaction between the avatars and the simulatedenvironment is implemented by one or more computer applications thatgovern such interactions as simulated physics, exchange of informationbetween users, and the like. The nature of interactions among users ofthe virtual world is often limited by the constraints of the systemimplementing the virtual world.

It is within this context that embodiments of the invention arise.

BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS

The teachings of the present invention can be readily understood byconsidering the following detailed description in conjunction with theaccompanying drawings, in which:

FIG. 1A is a screen shot illustrating an example of a world maprepresenting a virtual world that may be used in conjunction withembodiments of the present invention.

FIG. 1B is a screen shot illustrating an example of a public space in avirtual world that may be used in conjunction with embodiments of thepresent invention.

FIG. 1C is a screen shot illustrating an example of a private space in avirtual world that may be used in conjunction with embodiments of thepresent invention.

FIG. 1D is a screen shot illustrating an example of a virtualcommunication device according to an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 1E is a schematic diagram of a virtual world system according to anembodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 1F is a functional block diagram showing one implementation of amultimedia processing apparatus by which a user may perceive andinteract with a virtual world according to an embodiment of the presentinvention.

FIG. 2A is a functional block diagram showing one implementation of themultimedia processing apparatus that may be used in conjunction withembodiments of the invention.

FIG. 2B shows an implementation of a multimedia processing system thatmay be used in conjunction with embodiments of the invention.

FIGS. 2C-2D illustrate an image capture device including an array ofmicrophones for use with embodiments of the invention.

FIG. 2E is a block diagram illustrating examples of call routing betweenreal and virtual communication devices according to an embodiment of thepresent invention.

FIG. 2F is diagrammatically illustrates an example of communicationbetween real and virtual communication devices in accordance with anembodiment of the present invention.

FIG. 3 is a block diagram illustrating a video game apparatus that maybe used to interface with a virtual world according to an embodiment ofthe present invention.

FIG. 4 is a block diagram of a cell processor implementation of a videogame apparatus according to an embodiment of the present invention.

DESCRIPTION OF THE SPECIFIC EMBODIMENTS

Although the following detailed description contains many specificdetails for the purposes of illustration, anyone of ordinary skill inthe art will appreciate that many variations and alterations to thefollowing details are within the scope of the invention. Accordingly,the exemplary embodiments of the invention described below are set forthwithout any loss of generality to, and without imposing limitationsupon, the claimed invention.

According to an embodiment of the present invention users may interactwith a virtual world. As used herein the term virtual world means arepresentation of a real or fictitious environment having rules ofinteraction simulated by means of one or more processors that a realuser may perceive via one or more display devices and/or may interactwith via one or more user interfaces. As used herein, the term userinterface refers to a real device by which a user may send inputs to orreceive outputs from the virtual world. The virtual world may besimulated by one or more processor modules. Multiple processor modulesmay be linked together via a network. The user may interact with thevirtual world via a user interface device that can communicate with theprocessor modules and other user interface devices via a network.Certain aspects of the virtual world may be presented to the user ingraphical form on a graphical display such as a computer monitor,television monitor or similar display. Certain other aspects of thevirtual world may be presented to the user in audible form on a speaker,which may be associated with the graphical display.

By way of example, the virtual world may comprise a simulated publicspace and one or more simulated private spaces. In some embodiments,such public and private spaces may be presented to the user via agraphic display that presents a schematic representation or map of thevirtual world. By way of example, as shown in FIG. 1A, a world map 10may indicate a “home” location 11. The home location 11 may be a privatespace within the virtual world that is exclusive to a particular user.Other users may “visit” the home location 11 only at the invitation ofthe user associated with that location. The world map 10 may also showvarious other locations 12 that the user may visit, e.g., by selectingthem with a cursor or similar graphical user interface. These locationsmay be sponsored by vendors and may be represented on the map by theirrespective corporate logos or other well-recognized symbols. Suchlocations may be visited by an user of the virtual world. The virtualworld may or may not have a fixed amount of virtual “real estate”. Inpreferred embodiments, the amount of virtual real estate is not fixed.

In certain embodiments of the present invention, the virtual world mayhave multiple public spaces referred to herein as “lobbies”. Each lobbymay have associated with it a separate chat channel so that users in thelobby may interact with one another. Each lobby may have the appearanceof a lobby for a public building such as a hotel, office building,apartment building, theater or other public building. FIG. 1B depicts ascreen shot of such a lobby. The lobby may contain items with whichusers may interact. Examples of such items include games. As may be seenfrom FIG. 1B, portions of the virtual world may be presented graphicallyto the user in three-dimensional (3D) form. As used herein, the termthree-dimensional (3D) form refers to a representation having thedimensions of length, width and depth (or at least the illusion ofdepth). The lobby may contain “screens” 13, which are areas in spacesthat can be used to show photos or canned or streaming video.

Within the virtual world, users may be represented by avatars 14. Eachavatar within the virtual world may be uniquely associated with adifferent user. The name or pseudonym of a user may be displayed next tothe avatar so that users may readily identify each other. A particularuser's interactions with the virtual world may be represented by one ormore corresponding actions of the avatar. Different users may interactwith each other in the public space via their avatars. An avatarrepresenting a user could have an appearance similar to that of aperson, an animal or an object. An avatar in the form of a person mayhave the same gender as the user or a different gender. The avatar maybe shown on the display so that the user can see the avatar along withother objects in the virtual world. Alternatively, the display may showthe world from the point of view of the avatar without showing itself.The user's (or avatar's) perspective on the virtual world may be thoughtof as being the view of a virtual camera. As used herein, a virtualcamera refers to a point of view within the virtual world that may beused for rendering two-dimensional images of a 3D scene within thevirtual world. Users may interact with each other through their avatarsby means of the chat channels associated with each lobby. Users mayenter text for chat with other users via their user interface. The textmay then appear over or next to the user's avatar, e.g., in the form ofcomic-book style dialogue bubbles, sometimes referred to as chatbubbles. Such chat may be facilitated by the use of a canned phrase chatsystem sometimes referred to as quick chat. With quick chat, a user mayselect one or more chat phrases from a menu.

In embodiments of the present invention, the public spaces are public inthe sense that they are not uniquely associated with any particular useror group of users and no user or group of users can exclude another userfrom the public space. Each private space, by contrast, is associatedwith a particular user from among a plurality of users. A private spaceis private in the sense that the particular user associated with theprivate space may restrict access to the private space by other users.The private spaces may take on the appearance of familiar private realestate. For example, as seen in FIG. 1C a private space may beconfigured to resemble an apartment or private home. Virtual items maybe included within the private space. Examples of virtual items include,but are not limited to, furniture 15, decorations 16 and virtualcommunication devices 17, such as a virtual radio or video screen.

In certain embodiments of the present invention, users of the virtualworld, users may communicate by means of virtual communication devices.As used herein, the term virtual communication device generally refersto a virtual world simulation of a real world device using assets of thesystem that generates the virtual world. By way of example, as shown inFIG. 1D, a virtual communication device 18 may be presented on a displayin a form that facilitates operation of the device by the user. In theexample depicted in FIG. 1D, for instance, the virtual communicationdevice has the appearance of a portable game console, e.g., a SonyPlaystation Portable (PSP). Buttons on a real controller that the useruses to interact with the virtual world may be mapped to correspondingbuttons 19 or other controls on the virtual communication device tofacilitate interaction between the user and the virtual communicationdevice.

A virtual communication device may have associated with it a positionwithin the virtual world that may be fixed or movable. The communicationdevice may be simulated by simulating an interface for the simulatedcommunication device in the virtual world and presenting the simulatedinterface to a user for interaction therewith. By way of example, thevirtual device may have a form or appearance in the virtual world bywhich it can be recognized by a user. This form or appearance may beconfigured to mimic that of a corresponding real world device in a waythat facilitates user interaction. For example, a virtual phone may beshown as having buttons which the user may operate by using thecontroller. The virtual phone may further be shown as having a speaker,a mouthpiece and perhaps a graphic display screen. The simulatedcommunication device may be a simulated hand-held communication device,such as a telephone, mobile telephone (e.g., cell phone or cordlessphone), voice-over-internet-protocol (VoIP) phone, portable text messagedevice, portable email device, portable game device, two-way radio orother hand-held device.

According to an embodiment of the present invention a virtualcommunication device may be simulated in the virtual world andcommunication may take place between the simulated communication deviceand a real communication device. The real communication device may be areal hand-held communication device, such as a telephone, mobiletelephone (e.g., cell phone or cordless phone), voice-over-internetprotocol (VoIP) phone, portable text message device, portable emaildevice, portable game device, two-way radio or other hand-held device.Preferably, the real communication device is configured to communicatewith other real communication devices via one or more communicationchannels that are independent of the virtual world. As used herein, theterm “communication channel independent of the virtual world” means achannel of communication that does not require the existence of thevirtual world in order for communication to take place over thatchannel. For example, a virtual telephone may be used to make atelephone call to a real cellular phone (or vice versa) viacommunication assets provided by the virtual world. The real cellularphone, however, could still make calls to other real cellular phones ortelephones even if the virtual world did not exist. In some embodiments,the real phone may produce a distinctive ringtone when receiving callsfrom a virtual phone. In alternative embodiments, the simulated and realcommunication devices may communicate with each other by means of textmessages and/or video images.

FIG. 1E is a block diagram illustrating an example of system 20 that maybe used to simulate a virtual world. The system 20 includes simulationservers 22 and view servers 24. Each simulation server 22 may includeone or more processor modules that executes coded instructions thatsimulate some part of the virtual world. By way of example, eachsimulation server may include one or more multiple core processors,e.g., a dual-core, quad-core or Cell processors. Although a limitednumber of simulation servers 22 and a single view server 24 are depictedin FIG. 1E, this configuration may be arbitrarily extended to any numberof servers. The numbers of simulation servers 22 and view servers 24 mayboth be scaled. For example one simulator server 22 may accommodate andmany view servers 24, or many simulation servers 22 may accommodate oneview server 24. Adding more simulation servers 24 may allow for a biggerand/or better simulation of the virtual world. Adding more view servers24 allow the system 20 to handle more users. Of course, the system 20may accommodate both a bigger and better simulation and more users byadding more of both simulation servers 22 and view servers 24.Theoretically the number of simulation servers 22 may be infinitelyscalable. However, given a finite level of network bandwidth, the numberof view servers 14 may be reasonably expected to reach a finite limitafter a certain number of users due to computation and network bandwidthlimitations.

For the purpose of example and without limitation of embodiments of theinvention, examples will be described herein with respect to Cellprocessors. Cell processors are described in detail, e.g., in CellBroadband Engine Architecture, copyright International Business MachinesCorporation, Sony Computer Entertainment Incorporated, ToshibaCorporation Aug. 8, 2005 a copy of which may be downloaded athttp://cell.scei.cojp/, the entire contents of which are incorporatedherein by reference. A typical Cell processor has a power processor unit(PPU) and up to 8 additional processors referred to as synergisticprocessing units (SPU). Each SPU is typically a single chip or part of asingle chip containing a main processor and a co-processor. All of theSPUs and the PPU can access a main memory, e.g., through a memory flowcontroller (MFC). The SPUs can perform parallel processing of operationsin conjunction with a program running on the main processor. The SPUshave small local memories (typically about 256 kilobytes) that must bemanaged by software-code and data must be manually transferred to/fromthe local SPU memories. For high performance, this code and data must bemanaged from SPU software (PPU software involvement must be minimized).There are many techniques for managing code and data from the SPU.Examples of such techniques are described e.g., in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/238,077 to John P. Bates, Payton White andAttila Vass entitled “CELL PROCESSOR APPARATUS AND METHODS, filed Sep.27, 2005, U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/238,095 to Richard B.Stenson and John P. Bates entitled “CELL PROCESSOR TASK AND DATAMANAGEMENT” filed Sep. 27, 2005, U.S. patent application Ser. No.11/238,086 to Tatsuya Iwamoto entitled “CELL PROCESSOR TASK AND DATAMANAGEMENT” filed Sep. 27, 2005, U.S. patent application Ser. No.11/238,087 to John P. Bates, Payton R. White, Richard B. Stenson, HowardBerkey, Attila Vass, Mark Cerny and John Morgan entitled SPU TASKMANAGER FOR CELL PROCESSOR filed Sep. 27, 2005, U.S. patent applicationSer. No. 11/257,761 to Tatsuya Iwamoto entitled “SECURE OPERATION OFCELL PROCESSORS” filed Oct. 24, 2005, U.S. patent application Ser. No.11/461,390 to John P. Bates, Keisuke Inoue and Mark Cerny entitled CELLPROCESSOR METHODS AND APPARATUS, filed Jul. 31, 2006, the entirecontents of all of which are incorporated herein by reference. Thesimulation servers 22 may communicate with each other and with the viewservers 24 via high speed data transfer links 26. By way of example, thedata transfer links may be 10 gigabit per second Ethernet connections.The simulation servers 22 may be either remotely located with respect toeach other or they may be located proximate each other. To optimize datatransfer it may be desirable to locate the simulation servers 22 infairly close physical proximity, e.g., within the same room or on thesame server rack. The view servers 24 receive simulation data from thesimulation servers 22 and send view data to remotely distributed clientdevices 28 over a wide area network 30, such as the Internet or otherwide area network. The client devices 28 may be any suitable device thatcan communicate over the network 30. Communication over the network 30may be slower than over the fast data links 26.

By way of example, the client devices 28 may be video game consoledevices, such as the Sony PlayStation 3. Alternatively, the clientdevices 28 may be any computer device from handheld to workstation, etc.A handheld video game device, such as a PlayStation Portable from SonyComputer Entertainment of Tokyo, Japan is one example among others of ahandheld device that may be used as a client device 28 in embodiments ofthe present invention. The client devices 28 may send the view servers24 instructions relating to their desired interaction with otherclients' avatars and with the simulated environment. For example, aclient user may wish to move his or her avatar to a different portion ofthe simulated environment. Each client device 28 sends instructions toone of the view servers 24. These instructions are relayed by the viewservers to the simulation servers that perform the necessarycomputations to simulate the interactions.

Other devices 29 may also communicate with each other over the network30. Examples of such other devices include, telephones, cellular phones,voice over internet protocol (VoIP) phones, personal computers, portableweb browsers, portable email devices, text messaging devices, portablegame devices and the like. Communication between such other devices 29may be independent of the simulation servers 22 and view servers 26 thatgenerate the virtual world. Although the other devices 29 are notconsidered part of the system 20, they may interact with it via thenetwork 30.

The users of the client devices 28 are often interested in things aroundthem. The view servers 24 make sure that each client 28 receivesrelevant data about its surroundings in the proper order. The viewservers 24 determine what the client needs based on its avatar'slocation, orientation, motion, etc. By way of example, each view servermay generate the code and/or data that the client devices use to presentviews of the public spaces or private spaces.

To implement a complex simulated world, it may be desirable to establishpeer-to-peer communication between clients and servers or between clientdevices and other client devices. For example, audio/video (A/V) chatamong users in the same public space may be implemented by directpeer-to-peer communication among the users. Such peer-to-peercommunication may reduce the load on the servers. Embodiments of theinvention may make use of Peerlib to traverse network addresstranslators (NATs) to establish peer-to-peer connections among users inthe same public space. NAT traversal is described e.g., in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/245,853 to Yutaka Takeda, entitled “METHOD FORPEER-TO-PEER COMMUNICATION TRAVERSING NETWORK ADDRESS TRANSLATORS OFTYPE SYMMETRIC” filed Oct. 4, 2005, which is incorporated herein byreference.

FIG. 1F shows one implementation of a multimedia processing system 100that may be used as a client device 28 and a user interface with thevirtual world generated by the system 20. The processing system 100 mayinclude a composite apparatus capable of processing a plurality ofcontents, such as still images, moving images, music, broadcasts, andgames, spread over a plurality of media. The processing of a pluralityof contents includes presentation, recording, and other related tasksperformed by the multimedia processing system 100. By way of example,the multimedia processing system 100 includes a multimedia processingapparatus 102, a display 104 (e.g., a monitor or television), and acontroller 114. Buttons on the controller 114 may be mapped tocorresponding buttons 19 on the virtual controller 18 shown in FIG. 1Dand described above.

The multimedia processing apparatus 102 may receive multimedia contentsfrom various media sources, such as broadcast media, the Internet (orother network) media, an optical disk 110, and a memory card 112.Contents from the broadcast media may be received through a broadcastdata channel 106, while contents from the Internet media can be receivedthrough a network data channel 108. The broadcast and network datachannels 106, 108 may be either wireless or wired channels. The contentsfrom the broadcast media and the Internet media can be recorded andstored by the multimedia processing apparatus 102. The received contentscan also be used by various functions (e.g., a game) of the multimediaprocessing apparatus 102 in addition to interaction with the virtualworld.

The received multimedia contents may be displayed on the display 104.The display may include a video monitor, such as a cathode ray tube(CRT) or flat screen for display of still or moving visual images. Thedisplay 104 may further include one or more audio speakers forpresenting sounds to the user. The controller 114 allows the user toinput various instructions related to multimedia processing, and tocontrol functions of the multimedia processing apparatus 102.

The system 100 may include audio and video inputs to facilitate userinteraction with visual images and/or audible sounds presented by thedisplay 104. Such inputs may include a video image capture device 116,such as a camera, and an audio signal capture device 118, such as amicrophone. The video image capture device 116 may be placed on top ofor integrated into the display 104 and coupled to the multimediaprocessing apparatus 102, e.g., by cables, or over-the-air connections,such as optical (e.g., infrared) or radiofrequency (e.g., Bluetooth)data links. It should be understood that the image capture device 116may be placed in any other proximate location that will allow it tocapture images that are located about in front of the display 104.Techniques for capturing these movements and interactions can vary, butexamples of such techniques are described in United Kingdom ApplicationsGB 0304024.3 (PCT/GB2004/000693) and GB 0304022.7 (PCT/GB2004/000703),each filed on Feb. 21, 2003, and each of which is hereby incorporated byreference. The image capture device 116 may be a digital camera, e.g. aUSB 2.0 type camera. Such a camera may have a field of view of about 75degrees, and an f-stop of about 1.5 and be capable of capturing imagesat a frame rate of up to about 120 frames per second. By way of example,the video image capture device may be an EyeToy Camera available fromLogitech of Fremont, Calif. The media processing apparatus 102 may be agame console, television, digital video recorder (DVR), cableset-top-box, home media server or consumer electronic device andincluding any device capable of rendering itself subject to control of auser. In alternative embodiments, the image capture device may be athree-dimensional (3D) camera. As used herein, a 3D camera (or zedcamera) refers to an image capture device configured to facilitatedetermining the depth of objects in an image. In this context, the term“depth” refers a location of an object relative to a directionperpendicular to a plane of the image.

FIG. 2A is a functional block diagram showing one implementation of themultimedia processing apparatus 102. In the illustrated implementation,the multimedia processing apparatus 102 includes the controller 114,video image capture device 116, audio signal capture device 118, a datainput/output (I/O) unit 200, a display output unit 202, a displaycontrol unit 204, a storage unit 208, and a game/virtual world processor206. By way of example, the game/virtual world processor 206 may be ormay include a parallel processor such as a cell processor having a powerprocessing unit (PPU) coupled to one or more synergistic processingunits (SPU). Cell processors are described, e.g., in U.S. patentapplication Ser. No. 11/238,077, which is incorporated herein byreference. The multimedia processing apparatus 102 further includesprograms and instructions for performing various functions, such as adata input function, a data retaining function, an image processingfunction, a rendering function, and other related functions.

The controller 114 may include a direction-determining unit 222 fordetermining one or a combination of four directions (i.e., an upwarddirection, a downward direction, a left direction, and a rightdirection) from the user input; and an instruction-determining unit 224for determining an instruction from the user input. The instruction mayinclude a command to present a multimedia content, to terminate thepresentation, to invoke a menu screen, and to issue other relatedcommands and/or instructions. Output of the controller 114, video imagecapture device 116 and audio signal capture device 118 is directed tothe display output unit 202, the display control unit 204, and thegame/virtual world processor 206.

In the illustrated implementations of FIGS. 1B and 2A, thedirection-determining unit 222 and the instruction-determining unit 224may be configured with a combination of buttons, circuits, and programsto actuate, sense, and determine the direction and the instruction. Thebuttons can include cross-shaped keys or joysticks. The buttonassociated with an instruction for invoking a menu screen can be set ina toggle manner so that the menu screen can be toggled between a displaymode and a non-display mode each time the button is pressed.

In one implementation, the direction-determining unit 222 may determinethe diagonal movements of the button as a binary command in which themovement is ascertained to be in one of two directions. Thus, a diagonalmovement between the up direction and the right direction can beascertained to be in either the up or the right direction. In anotherimplementation, the direction-determining unit 222 may determine thediagonal movements of the button as an analog command in which themovement is ascertained to be in a particular direction up to theaccuracy of the measurement. Thus, a diagonal movement between the updirection and the right direction can be ascertained to be in anorthwesterly direction. Directional movements may also be determinedthrough interaction between the user, the video image capture device 116and the display control 204 as described below.

The data I/O unit 200 may include a broadcast input unit 212 forinputting broadcast contents via the broadcast channel 106; a networkcommunication unit 214 for inputting and outputting data such as webcontents via the network channel 108; a disk reading unit 216 forinputting data stored on a disk 110; and a memory card reading unit 218for inputting and outputting data to/from a memory card 112. Output ofthe data I/O unit 200 may be directed to the display output unit 202,the display control unit 204, the game processor 206, and the storageunit 208.

The display output unit 202 may include a decoder 232, a synthesizer234, an output buffer 236, and an on-screen buffer 238. The decoder 232decodes input data received from the data I/O unit 200 or the storageunit 208. Thus, the input data may include broadcast contents, movies,and music. The synthesizer 234 processes the decoded input data based onuser direction/instruction received from the controller 114. The outputof the synthesizer 234 is stored in the output buffer 236. The on-screenbuffer 238 may store image data of a menu screen generated by thedisplay control unit 204. The output of the display output unit 202 istransmitted to the display 104.

The display control unit 204 may include a menu manager 242, an effectsprocessor 244, a contents controller 246, and an image generator 248.The menu manager 242 manages media items and multimedia contentsreceived from the storage unit 208 and the data I/O unit 200, and shownon the menu screen. The effects processor 244 processes operation oficons and icon arrays on the menu screen. The effects processor 244 alsomanages various actions and effects to be displayed on the menu screen.The contents controller 246 controls processing of media items andmultimedia contents, and handling of data from the data I/O unit, thestorage unit 208, and the game/virtual world processor 206. The imagegenerator 248 operates to generate a menu screen including a medium iconarray and a contents icon array.

The game/virtual world processor 206 executes game and/or virtual worldprograms using data read from the data I/O unit 200 or from the storageunit 208. The game/virtual world processor 206 executes a game programor facilitates user interaction with the virtual world based on userinstructions received from the controller 114. The display data of theexecuted game program or virtual world interaction is transmitted to thedisplay output unit 202.

In embodiments of the present invention, signals from the video imagecapture device 116 and audio signal capture device 118 allow a user tointeract with and manipulate images shown on the display 104.Specifically, embodiments of the invention may allow a user to “grab”and “drag” objects from one location to another on the display 104. Asshown in FIG. 2B, the video image capture device 116 points at andcaptures an image I_(U) of a user U. The image I_(U) may then be shownon the display 104 in the background of other images through a techniqueknown as alpha blending.

The term “alpha blending” refers generally to a convex combination oftwo colors allowing for transparency effects in computer graphics. Thevalue alpha in the color code may range from 0.0 to 1.0, where 0.0represents a fully transparent color, and 1.0 represents a fully opaquecolor. By way of example, the value of the resulting color when colorValue1 is drawn over a background of color Value0 may be given by:

Value=Value0(1.0−alpha)+Value1(alpha)

The alpha component is used to blend to red, green and blue componentsequally, as in 32-bit RGBA, or, alternatively, there are three alphavalues specified corresponding to each of the primary colors forspectral color filtering.

Once the user's hand h is recognized, the effects processor maycorrelate the directional displacement of the user's hand to directionalinput such as would normally be received from the controller 114.Optionally a magnitude of the displacement can control the input speed.

In particular embodiments, the image I_(U) may include the user's head Hand hand h. It is noted that to facilitate user interaction with theimage I_(U) the user's image I_(U) may be presented on the screen as amirror image of the user U. Thus, when the user U moves his hand h tothe user's left, an image I_(h) of the hand also moves to the user'sleft. The effects processor 244 may be configured to recognize theuser's hand h and recognizes changes in the aspect ratio (ratio ofheight to width) of the hand image I_(h). These changes in aspect ratiomay be used to signal the controller 114 that the user has “grabbed” or“clicked” on an object 140 presented on the display. The effectsprocessor 244 can then move the selected object with the motion of theimage I_(h) of the user's hand h. In some embodiments, the user may holda deformable “C”-shaped object 142 that is colored to be more readilyrecognizable to the effects processor 244 when interpreting the imagefrom the video image capture device 116. Deformation of the object 142,referred to herein as a “clam” can provide a change in aspect ratio thatis recognize as a command to “grab” or “click” an object in the display104.

It is often desirable for the effects processor 244 to be able torecognize whether the user U is using his left or right hand tomanipulate the object 140 on the display 104. For example, whenmanipulating an object on the display 104 with the left hand it is oftendesirable for object to appear to the left of the user's head H. In sucha case the controller may also include software that recognizes theusers hand h, head H, his arm A and his chest C by their correspondingimages I_(h), I_(H), I_(A), and I_(C). With this information, thecontroller 114 can determine whether the user U is using his left orright hand. For example, if the user's hand h is on the left side of hishead H and his arm A is not across his chest, it can be determined thatthe user U is using his left hand. Similarly, if the user's hand h is onthe left side of his head and his arm is across his chest, it can bedetermined that the user U is using his right hand.

In certain embodiments of the invention the image capture device 116 andaudio signal capture device 118 may be combined into the same piece ofequipment. For example, FIGS. 2C-2D depict an image capture device 120that may be used with the multimedia processing system 100. The device120 includes an optical image capture device 122, e.g., a digital camera(or 3D camera) and one or more microphones 124. The microphones 124 maybe arranged in an array and spaced apart from each other at knowndistances. By way of example and without loss of generality, themicrophones 124 may be spaced in a linear array with adjacentmicrophones spaced about 2 centimeters apart center-to-center. Eachmicrophone may have a resonant frequency of about 16 kilohertz. Suchmicrophone arrays may be used to locate and track one or more sources ofsound in conjunction with operation of the apparatus 102 and interactionwith a virtual world. The use of such microphone arrays for sound sourcelocation and tracking is described, e.g., in U.S. patent applicationsSer. Nos. 11/381,724, 11/381,725 and 11/381,729 filed May 4, 2006, theentire disclosures of all of which are incorporated herein by reference.

In certain embodiments of the invention it is desirable for themicrophones 124 to move with the image capture device 122. For example,the microphones 124 may be mounted to a frame 126 that keeps themicrophones in a fixed positional relationship with respect to the imagecapture device, e.g., with respect to a lens 128. Although themicrophones are depicted as being arrayed in a horizontal lineararrangement, they may alternatively be oriented vertically or diagonallyor arrayed in a two-dimensional arrangement.

In some embodiments, the device 120 may include a visible LED 130 and aninfrared LED 132. These may be used to illuminate objects in a field ofview of the image capture device 122. To facilitate capture of infraredimages, the lens 128 may include a so-called “day-night” coating thattransmits visible light and selected frequencies of the infrared (e.g.,frequencies at around 940 nm).

By way of example, elements of the system 20 and apparatus 102 may beset up so that a may direct his or her avatar to pick up virtual cellphone, dial number and make real call to a real or virtual phone. If theintended recipient of the call is another user of the virtual world, thesystem 20 and apparatus 102 may be suitable programmed to connect tothat user's virtual phone, e.g., via VoIP if that user happens to beonline interacting with the virtual world at the time of the call.Elements of the system 20 and apparatus 102 may be configured to routthe call by default to the intended recipient's virtual phone (if any).If the intended recipient is not online, the call may be re-routed tothe recipient's real communication device. Examples of realcommunication devices may include, but are not limited to phones (e.g.,land line, cellular phone, or VoIP phone) or voice mail (which may beassociated with a real or virtual phone) or any network device with VoIPcapability including portable game devices and the like. Alternativelycall may be routed by default to the user's real communication device.

In such embodiments, elements of the system 20 and apparatus 102 may beused to enable intelligent two-way routing between the virtual world andreal communication devices.

By way of example and without loss of generality, communication betweenreal and virtual devices may be understood with respect to FIG. 2E andFIG. 2F. As shown in FIG. 2E, two or more users 251, 252 may interactwith a virtual world, e.g., over network 30 via the system 20, describedabove with respect to FIG. 1E. Each user may interface with the system20 over the network 30 via client devices 253, 254, which may besuitably configured, e.g., as described above with respect to FIG. 1Fand 2A. Each client device 253, 254 may include suitably configuredhardware and/or software that generates a virtual communication devices255, 256. Device avatars may represent the virtual communication devicesin the virtual world. A device avatar may take on the appearance of areal device, e.g., as described above. Alternatively, the user maycustomize the device avatar so that it takes on an entirely arbitraryand/or fanciful appearance. The Each user 251, 252 may also have accessto real communication devices, such as land line telephones 257, 258 andcell phones 259, 260. Those of skill in the art will recognize thatembodiments of the present invention may be implemented with any numberof users and any number of real and/or virtual communication devices.

Each client device 253, 254 may be provided with a configurable router261, 262 to facilitate routing of calls among real devices and virtualdevices. The routers 261, 262 may reside in software or hardware, on aserver, peer-to-peer network, combination, etc. In the example depictedin FIG. 2E, the routers 261, 262 are located on the client devices 253,254, however this is not the only possible configuration. The routers261, 262 may alternatively be located anywhere, e.g., on the simulationservers 22, view servers 24 or other devices connected to the network30. The routers 261, 262 may be accessed in a plurality of ways and fromvarious devices, including, but not limited to, the virtual phone orcommunication device, real communication device, network web pages, andthe like. Each router 261, 262 may be configured with one or morerouting preferences to control the routing function. The routers 261,262 may implement routing preferences for either the source or thetarget of a communication. As used in the context of this embodiment,the “source” of a communication generally refers to the partyoriginating a communication (e.g., the “caller” for telephone call orthe “sender” for text message or email). As used in the context of thisembodiment, the “target” of a communication generally refers to theintended recipient of the communication. It is noted that the source ortarget need not be a user of the virtual world.

By way of example, suppose a first user 251 wishes to communicate with asecond user 252, e.g., using virtual communication device 255. In thiscase, the first user 251 is the source of the call and the second user252 is the target of the call. The first user's router 261 may beconfigured to preferentially attempt to contact the second user 252 atvirtual communication device 256. If the user is not online and usingthe virtual world, the first user's router 261 may attempt to contactthe second user at land line 258 and failing that, the router 261 mayattempt to contact the second user 252 at his or her cell phone 260. Asan alternative example, it is noted that the second user's router 260may implement its own routing preference for reception of communicationsfrom the first user 251. For example, the second user's router 262 maypreferentially route calls from the first user 251 to the second user'scell phone 260, then to the second user's land line 258 and then to thesecond user's virtual device 256.

In a preferred embodiment each user 251, 252 may have one correspondingtelephone number that is associated with each of that user's real andvirtual communication devices. The routers 261, 262 may route calls to aparticular user's number among the user's different devicesautomatically. Such routing may be based on the user's preferences, theuser's activity, or some combination of both. It is noted that therouters 261, 262 may be programmed with different preferences dependingon the identity of the source of the communication and/or on theidentity of the target of the communication.

For example, in one mode the first user's router 261 may receive a callfrom a source who is calling a first user's number. In one mode, thefirst user 251 may provide the router 261 with information indicatingthat the first user 251 is online. Such information may be programmedinto the multimedia processing apparatus 102, e.g., using the controller114. Alternatively, the router 261 may check to see if the first user251 is online. If so, the router may router 261 may route the “call” tothe first user's virtual communication device 255, which may beconfigured “ring” even if the first user 251 is online via the seconduser's client device 254.

In another mode, the router 261 may be provided with information or maycheck to determine that the first user 251 is online and the target(e.g., the second user 252) is offline. In such a case, the first user'srouter 261 may route the “call” to the second user's real communicationdevice, e.g., land line 258 or cell phone 260.

In another mode, the first user's router 261 may be provided informationor determine that the first user 251 is online and the second user 252is online. In such a case, a “text message” may be routed within thevirtual world, e.g., to the second user's avatar OR the target seconduser's virtual device 256.

In another mode, the router 261 may be provided information or may checkto determine if the second user 252 is online. If the second user 252 isoffline the “text message” may be routed to a real world deviceassociated with the second user, e.g., land line 258 or cell phone 260.

Many other permutations on the above examples are also possible. Forexample, in the above examples the source may place the call from withinthe virtual world OR within the virtual world through an avatar virtualdevice OR through any VOIP device or service or through any realtelephone line and source.

In other configurations the above intelligent routing may take actionbased on user preferences so a user may want his real cell phone to ringwhen online not his avatar phone. In other configurations the aboveintelligent routing may take action based on STATE CONTROLS so only incertain circumstances does the call route to the avatar or the realphone depending on the application configuration. For example, if atarget is involved in an online game and does not wish to be interruptedthe call may be routed to the target's real or virtual voicemail. In yetanother configuration, a call may be routed to virtual device but if thedevice does not ring instead of going to virtual voicemail call may bere-routed to a real device, such as a real phone.

As shown in FIG. 2F, embodiments of the present invention allow for asituation where the first user 251 calls the second user 252 using areal phone, e.g., land line 257 speaks into the phone and the firstuser's avatar 263 appears on the second user's virtual communicationdevice 256 which is shown on the display 104 connected to the multimediaprocessing apparatus 102 belong to the second user 252. The first user'sname 266 may also be shown on the display 104 proximate the first user'savatar 263. The first user's spoken speech 265 may be translated to textthrough use of speech recognition software and/or hardware, which may beimplemented on the apparatus 102, the simulation servers 22, view server24 or other device. The resulting text may appear on the display 104 astext bubbles 264 proximate the first user's avatar 263. An audio speaker267 may play audible sounds 268 of the first user's speech 265 duringcommunication between the first and second users.

It is noted that the same routing procedure may be used for other typesof messaging, e.g. text messaging or email. An advantage of this systemis that real calls and/or text messages may be routed from one user toanother in a way that can avoid long distance or other phone chargesassociated with real communication devices. The recipient's (or user's)real telephone or text message device may be equipped with middleware tofacilitate interaction with the virtual world supported by the system20.

In some embodiments, a user may be able to use a real communicationdevice to access virtual world content. For example, a cellular phone,portable internet device, etc. may be used to make changes to the user'savatar, public space or private space. Alternatively, the realcommunication device may be used to remotely access virtualcommunication device content. In particular, the real communicationdevice may be used as an interface between the simulated communicationdevice and a user. For example, suppose the virtual communication deviceis a virtual digital video recorder (DVR) located within the user'sprivate space. A user may access the virtual DVR to record a real orvirtual event by way of a real cellular phone and electronic programmingguide.

As mentioned above, communicating between the real and virtualcommunication devices may involve video communication. According to aparticular embodiment, an image of the avatar may be displayed with thereal communication device during the video communication. The systemthat generates the virtual world may facilitate lip-synching of theavatar image to real or synthesized speech generated by the userassociated with the avatar. For example, the user may record a voicemessage to be sent to the real device as part of a video message. Thesystem may generate a video message of the avatar speaking the voicemessage in which the avatar's lip movements are synchronized to theuser's speech within the message. Alternatively, the user may enter textof the message into a virtual device. The system may then synthesizespeech for the avatar from the text and then generate a video image ofthe avatar in which the avatar's lip movements are synchronized to thesynthesized speech. In other embodiments, the user may record a soundand video message, e.g., using the video image capture device 116 andaudio signal capture device 118.

In some embodiments, the avatars 14 may express emotion throughanimation, facial change, sound, particle or chat bubble change tocommunicate a specific emotion. Such expressions of emotion by theavatar (sometimes called “emotes”) may be pre-programmed and may betriggered by user commands. In particular embodiments of the invention,emotions expressed by the user during interaction with the virtual worldmay be mapped to emotion exhibited by the user's avatar. In certainembodiments, the user may select an emotional state that can beprojected by the avatar. By way of example avatar emotes may be selectedfrom a menu presented to the user by the apparatus 102. If, for example,the user selects “happy”, the user's avatar may be shown with a smile onits face. If the user selects “sad”, the avatar may be shown with afrown. Such menu-drive emotions may be somewhat awkward for a user toimplement quickly. Therefore, in certain embodiments of the apparatus102 may be configured to detect an emotional state of the user in realtime and then appropriately change the features of the user's avatar toreflect that state. Such real time tracking of user emotional state canbe particularly useful, e.g., for mapping user emotional state onto anavatar during video communication in which an image of the user's avataris presented to a real device.

By way of non-limiting example, the apparatus 102 may track useremotional state in real time by capturing one or more visual images ofthe user U and analyzing one or more facial features of the user usingthe image capture device 116. The game/virtual world processor 206 maybe programmed to analyze these images, e.g., using facial features suchas the user's lips, eyes, eyelids and eyebrows, cheeks, teeth ornostrils, or body language features, e.g., stance, placement of arms orhands, to determine the user's emotional state. Such facial and/or bodylanguage analysis may be enhanced through the use of a 3D camera togenerate the images.

Alternatively, user emotional stage may be tracked in real time throughanalysis of the user's voice stress as exhibited in user speech or othervocalizations detected by the audio signal capture device 118. Where theuser communicates via text, emotional may be tracked by analysis of thetext for certain words, phrases or language patterns that are indicativeof emotional state. In addition, the user's emotional state may betracked using other biometrics, such as electrocardiographic (EKG),electroencephalographic (EEG), galvanic skin response, or thermalimaging data. Such data may be obtained through appropriate sensorsincorporated into the controller 114 and analyzed by appropriatelyconfigured software, hardware, or firmware incorporated into theprocessor 206. Thermal imaging data may also be obtained if the imagecapture device 116 includes an infrared imaging capability.

Once the user's emotional state has been determined various combinationsof body language and facial features indicative of the emotional statemay be reflected in emotes exhibited by animation of the avatar (e.g., araised fist combined with bared teeth to indicate anger).

In some embodiments, users may wish to use customized gestures or“emotes” for their avatars. To facilitate this one or more customgestures may be generated for the avatar. These custom gestures may thenbe associated with one or more user interface signals so that the user'savatar can perform the gesture on command. By way of example, the customgesture may be generated through use of motion capture or performancecapture techniques to record and digitize the user's bodily movements ormapping of the user's facial expression as the user performs thegesture. In some embodiments, the image capture device 116 may be usedfor this purpose. Alternatively, a commercial motion capture studio orperformance capture studio may be used for this purpose.

In motion capture, the user or some other performer may wear markersnear each joint to identify the motion by the positions or anglesbetween the markers. Acoustic, inertial, LED, magnetic or reflectivemarkers, or combinations of any of these, are tracked, optimally atleast two times the rate of the desired motion, to submillimeterpositions. The motion capture computer software records the positions,angles, velocities, accelerations and impulses, providing an accuratedigital representation of the motion. By way of example, an opticalmotion capture system may triangulate the 3D position of a markerbetween one or more cameras calibrated to provide overlappingprojections. A passive optical system may use markers coated with aretroreflective material to reflect light back that is generated nearthe cameras lens. The cameras sensitivity can be adjusted takingadvantage of most cameras narrow range of sensitivity to light so onlythe bright markers will be sampled ignoring skin and fabric.Alternatively, an active optical system may be used in which the markersthemselves are powered to emit their own light. Power may besequentially provided to each marker may in phase with the capturesystem providing a unique identification of each marker for a givencapture frame at a cost to the resultant frame rate.

Performance capture differs from standard motion capture due to theinteractive nature of the performance, capturing the body, the hands andfacial expression all at the same time, as opposed to capturing data forreference motion and editing the motions together later.

Once the user's body movements and/or facial expression for the gesturehave been digitized, the digitized gesture may be used to generate codedinstructions or other user interface signals for animation of the avatarso that it performs the gesture. The code or other user interfacesignals may be distributed to one or more other users, so that they cancustomize their avatars to perform the custom gesture. Customized avatargestures may be combined with customized avatar clothing, footwear,hairstyles, ethnic characteristics and other custom avatar features as ameans of social identification with a particular group. In someembodiments it may be desirable to moderate the use of custom gestures,e.g., to avoid unnecessarily offending other users or breaking the law.As used herein moderating or moderation refers to enforcement of somedegree of rules for acceptable behavior in the virtual world. Suchmoderation may be implemented by the view servers 24, which may analyzethe custom gestures for rudeness or other indications ofinappropriateness. Moderating the display of the custom gesture mayinclude restricting an ability of a particular user to make an avatarperform the custom gesture or an ability of the particular user toperceive the avatar performing the custom gesture based on predeterminedcriteria. Such predetermined criteria may include the age of the user orviewer of the gesture or a sensitivity of the viewer to offense based onreligious, ethnic or other affiliation of the viewer.

The systems and methods described above may be modified to implementcommunication using a virtual world according to an alternativeembodiment of the invention. Specifically, an avatar may be associatedwith a source of an email. A user may generate an email within thevirtual world and associate one or more images of his or her avatar withthe email. The email may be sent from the virtual world to a real a realdevice. The avatar images may be then be presented at email'sdestination, e.g., by self-extracting email attachment. The email may begenerated, e.g., using a virtual communication device within the virtualworld. By way of example, and without limitation, the destination of theemail may be a real communication device, e.g., any real deviceconfigured to receive email messages. The real communication device maybe configured to communicate with other real communication devices viaone or more communication channels that are independent of the virtualworld.

By way of example, and without loss of generality, the virtual world mayoptionally comprise a simulated public space configured to facilitateinteraction among a plurality of users and one or more private spaces.Each private space is associated with a particular user of the pluralityof users, e.g., as described above.

Recorded or synthesized speech may be associated with the email andpresented with the one or more images at the destination. The avatarimages may comprise an animation of the avatar generated specificallyfor the email. The animation may be presented at the destination, e.g.,by self-extracting email attachment. In addition, one or more gesturesmay be mapped to the animation of the avatar, e.g., as described above.The gestures may be mapped by recording audio and/or video of a sourceof the email message and mapping one or more features of the audioand/or video to one or more features of the avatar in the animation.

In some embodiments a theme may be associated with virtual cameramovements in the animation. By way of example, and without limitation,the theme may involve choice of virtual camera angle, tracking, panning,tilting, zoom, close-up, simulated lighting, and the like. The virtualcamera position may be fixed or moving. In addition, the theme mayinvolve a choice of background scenery for the avatar.

In some embodiments, generating the email may involve tracking anemotional state of the source, e.g., as described above, and mapping theemotional state to the theme. For example, a serene or calm emotionalstate may be mapped to a theme characterized by fixed camera position orrelatively slow virtual camera movement. An agitated or excitedemotional state may be mapped to a theme characterized by jarring cameramovement, extreme close-ups, harsh camera angles, and the like.

Avatar email communications of the type described above may beimplemented, e.g., by appropriate configuration of the system 20 of FIG.1E and/or the multimedia apparatus 102 of FIG. 1F and FIG. 2A.

According to embodiments of the present invention, virtual world systemsand methods of the type described above may be implemented using aconsole video game apparatus as a client device 28 and a user interfacefor interacting with the virtual world, e.g., as generated by elementsof the system 20. As depicted in FIG. 3, a console video game apparatus300 may include a processor 301 and a memory 302 (e.g., RAM, DRAM, ROM,and the like). In addition, the video game apparatus 300 may havemultiple processors 301 if parallel processing is to be implemented. Thememory 302 includes data and game program code 304, which may includeportions that facilitate user interaction with a virtual world asdescribed above. Specifically, the memory 302 may include inertialsignal data 306 which may include stored controller path information asdescribed above. The memory 302 may also contain stored gesture data308, e.g., data representing one or more gestures relevant to the gameprogram 304. Coded instructions executed on the processor 302 mayimplement a multi-input mixer 305, which may be configured and functionas described above.

The apparatus 300 may also include well-known support functions 310,such as input/output (I/O) elements 311, power supplies (P/S) 312, aclock (CLK) 313 and cache 314. The apparatus 300 may optionally includea mass storage device 315 such as a disk drive, CD-ROM drive, tapedrive, or the like to store programs and/or data. The controller mayalso optionally include a display unit 316 and input unit 318 tofacilitate interaction between the apparatus 300 and a user. The displayunit 316 may be in the form of a cathode ray tube (CRT) or flat panelscreen that displays text, numerals, graphical symbols or images. Theuser interface 318 may include a keyboard, mouse, joystick, light pen orother device. In addition, the user input 318 may include a microphone,video camera or other signal transducing device to provide for directcapture of a signal to be analyzed. The apparatus 300 may also include anetwork interface 319 to enable the device to communicate with virtualworld servers and other similarly configured devices over a network,such as the internet. The processor 301, memory 302, user input 318,network interface 319 and other components of the apparatus 300 mayexchange signals (e.g., code instructions and data) with each other viaa system bus 320 as shown in FIG. 3.

A microphone array 322 may be coupled to the system 300 through the I/Ofunctions 311. The microphone array may include between about 2 andabout 8 microphones, preferably about 4 microphones with neighboringmicrophones separated by a distance of less than about 4 centimeters,preferably between about 1 centimeter and about 2 centimeters.Preferably, the microphones in the array 322 are omni-directionalmicrophones. An optional image capture unit 323 (e.g., a digital camera)may be coupled to the apparatus 300 through the I/O functions 311. Oneor more pointing actuators 325 may be mechanically coupled to the camerato control pointing of the image capture unit. These actuators 325 mayexchange signals with the processor 301 via the I/O functions 311.

As used herein, the term I/O generally refers to any program, operationor device that transfers data to or from the apparatus 300 and to orfrom a peripheral device. Every data transfer may be regarded as anoutput from one device and an input into another. Peripheral devicesinclude input-only devices, such as keyboards and mouses, output-onlydevices, such as printers as well as devices such as a writable CD-ROMthat can act as both an input and an output device. The term “peripheraldevice” includes external devices, such as a mouse, keyboard, printer,monitor, microphone, game controller, camera, external Zip drive orscanner as well as internal devices, such as a CD-ROM drive, CD-R driveor internal modem or other peripheral such as a flash memoryreader/writer, hard drive.

In certain embodiments of the invention, the apparatus 300 may include acontroller 330 coupled to the processor via the I/O functions 311 eitherthrough wires (e.g., a USB cable) or wirelessly, e.g., using infrared orradiofrequency (such as Bluetooth) connections. The controller 330 mayhave analog joystick controls 331 and conventional buttons 333 thatprovide control signals commonly used during playing of video games.Such video games may be implemented as processor readable data and/orinstructions from the program 304 which may be stored in the memory 302or other processor readable medium such as one associated with the massstorage device 315.

The joystick controls 331 may generally be configured so that moving acontrol stick left or right signals movement along the X axis, andmoving it forward (up) or back (down) signals movement along the Y axis.In joysticks that are configured for three-dimensional movement,twisting the stick left (counter-clockwise) or right (clockwise) maysignal movement along the Z axis. These three axis—X Y and Z—are oftenreferred to as roll, pitch, and yaw, respectively, particularly inrelation to an aircraft.

In addition to conventional features, the controller 330 may include oneor more inertial sensors 332, which may provide position and/ororientation information to the processor 301 via an inertial signal.Orientation information may include angular information such as a tilt,roll or yaw of the controller 330. By way of example, the inertialsensors 332 may include any number and/or combination of accelerometers,gyroscopes or tilt sensors. In a preferred embodiment, the inertialsensors 332 include tilt sensors adapted to sense orientation of thejoystick controller with respect to tilt and roll axes, a firstaccelerometer adapted to sense acceleration along a yaw axis and asecond accelerometer adapted to sense angular acceleration with respectto the yaw axis. An accelerometer may be implemented, e.g., as a MEMSdevice including a mass mounted by one or more springs with sensors forsensing displacement of the mass relative to one or more directions.Signals from the sensors that are dependent on the displacement of themass may be used to determine an acceleration of the joystick controller330. Such techniques may be implemented by instructions from the gameprogram 304 which may be stored in the memory 302 and executed by theprocessor 301.

By way of example an accelerometer suitable as the inertial sensor 332may be a simple mass elastically coupled at three or four points to aframe, e.g., by springs. Pitch and roll axes lie in a plane thatintersects the frame, which is mounted to the joystick controller 330.As the frame (and the joystick controller 330) rotates about pitch androll axes the mass will displace under the influence of gravity and thesprings will elongate or compress in a way that depends on the angle ofpitch and/or roll. The displacement and of the mass can be sensed andconverted to a signal that is dependent on the amount of pitch and/orroll. Angular acceleration about the yaw axis or linear accelerationalong the yaw axis may also produce characteristic patterns ofcompression and/or elongation of the springs or motion of the mass thatcan be sensed and converted to signals that are dependent on the amountof angular or linear acceleration. Such an accelerometer device canmeasure tilt, roll angular acceleration about the yaw axis and linearacceleration along the yaw axis by tracking movement of the mass orcompression and expansion forces of the springs. There are a number ofdifferent ways to track the position of the mass and/or or the forcesexerted on it, including resistive strain gauge material, photonicsensors, magnetic sensors, hall-effect devices, piezoelectric devices,capacitive sensors, and the like.

In addition, the joystick controller 330 may include one or more lightsources 334, such as light emitting diodes (LEDs). The light sources 334may be used to distinguish one controller from the other. For exampleone or more LEDs can accomplish this by flashing or holding an LEDpattern code. By way of example, 5 LEDs can be provided on the joystickcontroller 330 in a linear or two-dimensional pattern. Although a lineararray of LEDs is preferred, the LEDs may alternatively, be arranged in arectangular pattern or an arcuate pattern to facilitate determination ofan image plane of the LED array when analyzing an image of the LEDpattern obtained by the image capture unit 323. Furthermore, the LEDpattern codes may also be used to determine the positioning of thejoystick controller 330 during game play. For instance, the LEDs canassist in identifying tilt, yaw and roll of the controllers. Thisdetection pattern can assist in providing a better user/feel in games,such as aircraft flying games, etc. The image capture unit 323 maycapture images containing the joystick controller 330 and light sources334. Analysis of such images can determine the location and/ororientation of the joystick controller. Such analysis may be implementedby program code instructions 304 stored in the memory 302 and executedby the processor 301. To facilitate capture of images of the lightsources 334 by the image capture unit 323, the light sources 334 may beplaced on two or more different sides of the joystick controller 330,e.g., on the front and on the back (as shown in phantom). Such placementallows the image capture unit 323 to obtain images of the light sources334 for different orientations of the joystick controller 330 dependingon how the joystick controller 330 is held by a user.

In addition the light sources 334 may provide telemetry signals to theprocessor 301, e.g., in pulse code, amplitude modulation or frequencymodulation format. Such telemetry signals may indicate which joystickbuttons are being pressed and/or how hard such buttons are beingpressed. Telemetry signals may be encoded into the optical signal, e.g.,by pulse coding, pulse width modulation, frequency modulation or lightintensity (amplitude) modulation. The processor 301 may decode thetelemetry signal from the optical signal and execute a game command inresponse to the decoded telemetry signal. Telemetry signals may bedecoded from analysis of images of the joystick controller 330 obtainedby the image capture unit 323. Alternatively, the apparatus 301 mayinclude a separate optical sensor dedicated to receiving telemetrysignals from the lights sources 334. The use of LEDs in conjunction withdetermining an intensity amount in interfacing with a computer programis described, e.g., in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/429,414, toRichard L. Marks et al., entitled “USE OF COMPUTER IMAGE AND AUDIOPROCESSING IN DETERMINING AN INTENSITY AMOUNT WHEN INTERFACING WITH ACOMPUTER PROGRAM” (Attorney Docket No. SONYP052), filed May 4, 2006,which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety. In addition,analysis of images containing the light sources 334 may be used for bothtelemetry and determining the position and/or orientation of thejoystick controller 330. Such techniques may be implemented byinstructions of the program 304 which may be stored in the memory 302and executed by the processor 301.

The processor 301 may use the inertial signals from the inertial sensor332 in conjunction with optical signals from light sources 334 detectedby the image capture unit 323 and/or sound source location andcharacterization information from acoustic signals detected by themicrophone array 322 to deduce information on the location and/ororientation of the controller 330 and/or its user. For example,“acoustic radar” sound source location and characterization may be usedin conjunction with the microphone array 322 to track a moving voicewhile motion of the joystick controller is independently tracked(through the inertial sensor 332 and or light sources 334). In acousticradar a pre-calibrated listening zone is selected at runtime and soundsoriginating from sources outside the pre-calibrated listening zone arefiltered out. The pre-calibrated listening zones may include a listeningzone that corresponds to a volume of focus or field of view of the imagecapture unit 323. Examples of acoustic radar are described in detail inU.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/381,724, to Xiadong Mao entitled“METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR TARGETED SOUND DETECTION ANDCHARACTERIZATION”, filed May 4, 2006, which is incorporated herein byreference.

Any number of different combinations of different modes of providingcontrol signals to the processor 301 may be used in conjunction withembodiments of the present invention. Such techniques may be implementedby program code instructions 304 which may be stored in the memory 302and executed by the processor 301 and may optionally include one or moreinstructions that direct the one or more processors to select apre-calibrated listening zone at runtime and filter out soundsoriginating from sources outside the pre-calibrated listening zone. Thepre-calibrated listening zones may include a listening zone thatcorresponds to a volume of focus or field of view of the image captureunit 323.

The program 304 may optionally include one or more instructions thatdirect the one or more processors to produce a discrete time domaininput signal x_(m)(t) from microphones M₀ . . . M_(M), of the microphonearray 322, determine a listening sector, and use the listening sector ina semi-blind source separation to select the finite impulse responsefilter coefficients to separate out different sound sources from inputsignal x_(m)(t). The program 304 may also include instructions to applyone or more fractional delays to selected input signals x_(m)(t) otherthan an input signal x₀(t) from a reference microphone M₀. Eachfractional delay may be selected to optimize a signal to noise ratio ofa discrete time domain output signal y(t) from the microphone array. Thefractional delays may be selected to such that a signal from thereference microphone M₀ is first in time relative to signals from theother microphone(s) of the array. The program 304 may also includeinstructions to introduce a fractional time delay Δ into an outputsignal y(t) of the microphone array so that:y(t+Δ)=x(t+Δ)*b₀+x(t−1+Δ)*b₁+x(t−2+Δ)*b₂+ . . . +x(t−N+Δ)b_(N), where Δis between zero and ±1. Examples of such techniques are described indetail in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/381,729, to Xiadong Mao,entitled “ULTRA SMALL MICROPHONE ARRAY” filed May 4, 2006, the entiredisclosures of which are incorporated by reference.

The program 304 may include one or more instructions which, whenexecuted, cause the system 300 to select a pre-calibrated listeningsector that contains a source of sound. Such instructions may cause theapparatus to determine whether a source of sound lies within an initialsector or on a particular side of the initial sector. If the source ofsound does not lie within the default sector, the instructions may, whenexecuted, select a different sector on the particular side of thedefault sector. The different sector may be characterized by anattenuation of the input signals that is closest to an optimum value.These instructions may, when executed, calculate an attenuation of inputsignals from the microphone array 322 and the attenuation to an optimumvalue. The instructions may, when executed, cause the apparatus 300 todetermine a value of an attenuation of the input signals for one or moresectors and select a sector for which the attenuation is closest to anoptimum value. Examples of such a technique are described, e.g., in U.S.patent application Ser. No. 11/381,725, to Xiadong Mao, entitled“METHODS AND APPARATUS FOR TARGETED SOUND DETECTION” filed May 4, 2006,the disclosures of which are incorporated herein by reference.

Signals from the inertial sensor 332 may provide part of a trackinginformation input and signals generated from the image capture unit 323from tracking the one or more light sources 334 may provide another partof the tracking information input. By way of example, and withoutlimitation, such “mixed mode” signals may be used in a football typevideo game in which a Quarterback pitches the ball to the right after ahead fake head movement to the left. Specifically, a game player holdingthe controller 330 may turn his head to the left and make a sound whilemaking a pitch movement swinging the controller out to the right like itwas the football. The microphone array 320 in conjunction with “acousticradar” program code can track the user's voice. The image capture unit323 can track the motion of the user's head or track other commands thatdo not require sound or use of the controller. The sensor 332 may trackthe motion of the joystick controller (representing the football). Theimage capture unit 323 may also track the light sources 334 on thecontroller 330. The user may release of the “ball” upon reaching acertain amount and/or direction of acceleration of the joystickcontroller 330 or upon a key command triggered by pressing a button onthe controller 330.

In certain embodiments of the present invention, an inertial signal,e.g., from an accelerometer or gyroscope may be used to determine alocation of the controller 330. Specifically, an acceleration signalfrom an accelerometer may be integrated once with respect to time todetermine a change in velocity and the velocity may be integrated withrespect to time to determine a change in position. If values of theinitial position and velocity at some time are known then the absoluteposition may be determined using these values and the changes invelocity and position. Although position determination using an inertialsensor may be made more quickly than using the image capture unit 323and light sources 334 the inertial sensor 332 may be subject to a typeof error known as “drift” in which errors that accumulate over time canlead to a discrepancy D between the position of the joystick 330calculated from the inertial signal (shown in phantom) and the actualposition of the joystick controller 330. Embodiments of the presentinvention allow a number of ways to deal with such errors.

For example, the drift may be cancelled out manually by re-setting theinitial position of the controller 330 to be equal to the currentcalculated position. A user may use one or more of the buttons on thecontroller 330 to trigger a command to re-set the initial position.Alternatively, image-based drift may be implemented by re-setting thecurrent position to a position determined from an image obtained fromthe image capture unit 323 as a reference. Such image-based driftcompensation may be implemented manually, e.g., when the user triggersone or more of the buttons on the joystick controller 330.Alternatively, image-based drift compensation may be implementedautomatically, e.g., at regular intervals of time or in response to gameplay. Such techniques may be implemented by program code instructions304 which may be stored in the memory 302 and executed by the processor301.

In certain embodiments it may be desirable to compensate for spuriousdata in the inertial sensor signal. For example the signal from theinertial sensor 332 may be oversampled and a sliding average may becomputed from the oversampled signal to remove spurious data from theinertial sensor signal. In some situations it may be desirable tooversample the signal and reject a high and/or low value from somesubset of data points and compute the sliding average from the remainingdata points. Furthermore, other data sampling and manipulationtechniques may be used to adjust the signal from the inertial sensor toremove or reduce the significance of spurious data. The choice oftechnique may depend on the nature of the signal, computations to beperformed with the signal, the nature of game play or some combinationof two or more of these. Such techniques may be implemented byinstructions of the program 304 which may be stored in the memory 302and executed by the processor 301.

The processor 301 may perform analysis of inertial signal data 306 asdescribed above in response to the data 306 and program codeinstructions of a program 304 stored and retrieved by the memory 302 andexecuted by the processor module 301. In addition, the processor mayimplement certain virtual world simulation functions described above aspart of the program 304. Specifically, the program 304 may all or partof various methods for communicating with a virtual world and/or methodsfor interaction with a three-dimensional virtual world and/or avataremail communication as described above. Code portions of the program 304may conform to any one of a number of different programming languagessuch as Assembly, C++, JAVA or a number of other languages. Theprocessor module 301 forms a general-purpose computer that becomes aspecific purpose computer when executing programs such as the programcode 304. Although the program code 304 is described herein as beingimplemented in software and executed upon a general purpose computer,those skilled in the art will realize that the method of task managementcould alternatively be implemented using hardware such as an applicationspecific integrated circuit (ASIC) or other hardware circuitry. As such,it should be understood that embodiments of the invention can beimplemented, in whole or in part, in software, hardware or somecombination of both.

In one embodiment, among others, the program code 304 may include a setof processor readable instructions that direct the one or moreprocessors to analyze signals from the inertial sensor 332 to generateposition and/or orientation information and utilize the informationduring play of a video game, during communication with a virtual worldor during interaction with a three-dimensional virtual world. Theprogram code 304 may optionally include processor executableinstructions including one or more instructions which, when executedcause the image capture unit 323 to monitor a field of view in front ofthe image capture unit 323, identify one or more of the light sources334 within the field of view, detect a change in light emitted from thelight source(s) 334; and in response to detecting the change, triggeringan input command to the processor 301. The use of LEDs in conjunctionwith an image capture device to trigger actions in a game controller isdescribed e.g., in U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/759,782 toRichard L. Marks, filed Jan. 16, 2004 and entitled: METHOD AND APPARATUSFOR LIGHT INPUT DEVICE, which is incorporated herein by reference in itsentirety.

The program code 304 may optionally include processor executableinstructions including one or more instructions which, when executed,use signals from the inertial sensor and signals generated from theimage capture unit from tracking the one or more light sources as inputsto a game system, e.g., as described above. The program code 304 mayoptionally include processor executable instructions including one ormore instructions which, when executed compensate for drift in theinertial sensor 332.

Although embodiments of the present invention are described in terms ofexamples related to a video game controller 330 games, embodiments ofthe invention, including the system 300 may be used on any usermanipulated body, molded object, knob, structure, etc, with inertialsensing capability and inertial sensor signal transmission capability,wireless or otherwise.

By way of example, embodiments of the present invention may beimplemented on parallel processing systems. Such parallel processingsystems typically include two or more processor elements that areconfigured to execute parts of a program in parallel using separateprocessors. By way of example, and without limitation, FIG. 4illustrates a type of cell processor 400 according to an embodiment ofthe present invention. The cell processor 400 may be used as theprocessor 301 of FIG. 3 or in the simulation servers 22 or view servers24 of FIG. 1E. In the example depicted in FIG. 4, the cell processor 400includes a main memory 402, power processor element (PPE) 404, and anumber of synergistic processor elements (SPEs) 406. In the exampledepicted in FIG. 4, the cell processor 400 includes a single PPE 404 andeight SPE 406. In such a configuration, seven of the SPE 406 may be usedfor parallel processing and one may be reserved as a back-up in case oneof the other seven fails. A cell processor may alternatively includemultiple groups of PPEs (PPE groups) and multiple groups of SPEs (SPEgroups). In such a case, hardware resources can be shared between unitswithin a group. However, the SPEs and PPEs must appear to software asindependent elements. As such, embodiments of the present invention arenot limited to use with the configuration shown in FIG. 4.

The main memory 402 typically includes both general-purpose andnonvolatile storage, as well as special-purpose hardware registers orarrays used for functions such as system configuration, data-transfersynchronization, memory-mapped I/O, and I/O subsystems. In embodimentsof the present invention, a video game program 403 may be resident inmain memory 402. The video program 403 may include inertial, image andacoustic analyzers and a mixer configured as described with respect toFIGS. 4, 5A, 5B or 5C above or some combination of these. The program403 may run on the PPE. The program 403 may be divided up into multiplesignal processing tasks that can be executed on the SPEs and/or PPE.

By way of example, the PPE 404 may be a 64-bit PowerPC Processor Unit(PPU) with associated caches L1 and L2. The PPE 404 is a general-purposeprocessing unit, which can access system management resources (such asthe memory-protection tables, for example). Hardware resources may bemapped explicitly to a real address space as seen by the PPE. Therefore,the PPE can address any of these resources directly by using anappropriate effective address value. A primary function of the PPE 404is the management and allocation of tasks for the SPEs 406 in the cellprocessor 400.

Although only a single PPE is shown in FIG. 4, some cell processorimplementations, such as cell broadband engine architecture (CBEA), thecell processor 400 may have multiple PPEs organized into PPE groups, ofwhich there may be more than one. These PPE groups may share access tothe main memory 402. Furthermore the cell processor 400 may include twoor more groups SPEs. The SPE groups may also share access to the mainmemory 402. Such configurations are within the scope of the presentinvention.

Each SPE 406 is includes a synergistic processor unit (SPU) and its ownlocal storage area LS. The local storage LS may include one or moreseparate areas of memory storage, each one associated with a specificSPU. Each SPU may be configured to only execute instructions (includingdata load and data store operations) from within its own associatedlocal storage domain. In such a configuration, data transfers betweenthe local storage LS and elsewhere in the system 400 may be performed byissuing direct memory access (DMA) commands from the memory flowcontroller (MFC) to transfer data to or from the local storage domain(of the individual SPE). The SPUs are less complex computational unitsthan the PPE 404 in that they do not perform any system managementfunctions. The SPU generally have a single instruction, multiple data(SIMD) capability and typically process data and initiate any requireddata transfers (subject to access properties set up by the PPE) in orderto perform their allocated tasks. The purpose of the SPU is to enableapplications that require a higher computational unit density and caneffectively use the provided instruction set. A significant number ofSPEs in a system managed by the PPE 404 allow for cost-effectiveprocessing over a wide range of applications.

Each SPE 406 may include a dedicated memory flow controller (MFC) thatincludes an associated memory management unit that can hold and processmemory-protection and access-permission information. The MFC providesthe primary method for data transfer, protection, and synchronizationbetween main storage of the cell processor and the local storage of anSPE. An MFC command describes the transfer to be performed. Commands fortransferring data are sometimes referred to as MFC direct memory access(DMA) commands (or MFC DMA commands).

Each MFC may support multiple DMA transfers at the same time and canmaintain and process multiple MFC commands. Each MFC DMA data transfercommand request may involve both a local storage address (LSA) and aneffective address (EA). The local storage address may directly addressonly the local storage area of its associated SPE. The effective addressmay have a more general application, e.g., it may be able to referencemain storage, including all the SPE local storage areas, if they arealiased into the real address space.

To facilitate communication between the SPEs 406 and/or between the SPEs406 and the PPE 404, the SPEs 406 and PPE 404 may include signalnotification registers that are tied to signaling events. The PPE 404and SPEs 406 may be coupled by a star topology in which the PPE 404 actsas a router to transmit messages to the SPEs 406. Alternatively, eachSPE 406 and the PPE 404 may have a one-way signal notification registerreferred to as a mailbox. The mailbox can be used by an SPE 406 to hostoperating system (OS) synchronization.

The cell processor 400 may include an input/output (I/O) function 408through which the cell processor 400 may interface with peripheraldevices, such as a microphone array 412 and optional image capture unit413 and a game/virtual world controller 730. The controller unit 730 mayinclude an inertial sensor 732, and light sources 734. In addition anElement Interconnect Bus 410 may connect the various components listedabove. Each SPE and the PPE can access the bus 410 through a businterface units BIU. The cell processor 400 may also includes twocontrollers typically found in a processor: a Memory InterfaceController MIC that controls the flow of data between the bus 410 andthe main memory 402, and a Bus Interface Controller BIC, which controlsthe flow of data between the I/O 408 and the bus 410. Although therequirements for the MIC, BIC, BIUs and bus 410 may vary widely fordifferent implementations, those of skill in the art will be familiartheir functions and circuits for implementing them.

The cell processor 400 may also include an internal interrupt controllerIIC. The IIC component manages the priority of the interrupts presentedto the PPE. The IIC allows interrupts from the other components the cellprocessor 400 to be handled without using a main system interruptcontroller. The IIC may be regarded as a second level controller. Themain system interrupt controller may handle interrupts originatingexternal to the cell processor.

In embodiments of the present invention, certain computations thatfacilitate interaction with the virtual world, may be performed inparallel using the PPE 404 and/or one or more of the SPE 406. Suchcomputations may be run as one or more separate tasks that different SPE406 may take as they become available.

While the above is a complete description of the preferred embodiment ofthe present invention, it is possible to use various alternatives,modifications and equivalents. Therefore, the scope of the presentinvention should be determined not with reference to the abovedescription but should, instead, be determined with reference to theappended claims, along with their full scope of equivalents. Any featuredescribed herein, whether preferred or not, may be combined with anyother feature described herein, whether preferred or not. In the claimsthat follow, the indefinite article “A” or “An” refers to a quantity ofone or more of the item following the article, except where expresslystated otherwise. The appended claims are not to be interpreted asincluding means-plus-function limitations, unless such a limitation isexplicitly recited in a given claim using the phrase “means for.”

1. A method for communicating with a virtual world, wherein the virtualworld comprises a simulated public space configured to facilitateinteraction among a plurality of users and one or more private spaces,wherein each private space is associated with a particular user of theplurality of users, the method comprising: simulating a communicationdevice in the virtual world; and communicating between the simulatedcommunication device and a real communication device.
 2. The method ofclaim 1 wherein the real communication device is configured tocommunicate with other real communication devices via one or morecommunication channels that are independent of the virtual world.
 3. Themethod of claim 1 wherein simulating the communication device comprisessimulating an interface for the simulated communication device in thevirtual world and presenting the simulated interface to a user forinteraction therewith.
 4. The method of claim 1 wherein the public spaceis configured to resemble a lobby.
 5. The method of claim 1 wherein oneor more of the private spaces include one or more private spacesconfigured to resemble an apartment.
 6. The method of claim 1 whereinthe simulated communication device is a simulated hand-heldcommunication device.
 7. The method of claim 6 wherein the simulatedhand-held communication device is a simulated telephone, mobiletelephone, text message device, email device or two-way radio.
 8. Themethod of claim 1 wherein the real communication device is a realhand-held communication device.
 9. The method of claim 8 wherein thereal hand-held communication device is a real telephone, mobiletelephone, text message device, email device or two-way radio.
 10. Themethod of claim 1 wherein communicating between the simulatedcommunication device and the real communication device comprises makinga telephone call between a real telephone and a virtual telephone. 11.The method of claim 1 wherein communicating between the simulatedcommunication device and the real communication device comprises sendingone or more text messages between the simulated and real communicationdevices.
 12. The method of claim 1 further comprising associating anavatar with a particular user of the virtual world and representing theparticular user's interactions with the virtual world by one or morecorresponding actions of the avatar.
 13. The method of claim 1 whereincommunicating between the simulated communication device and the realcommunication device comprises accessing simulated communication devicecontent using the real communication device.
 14. The method of claim 1wherein the virtual world is a three-dimensional virtual world.
 15. Themethod of claim 1 wherein communicating between the simulatedcommunication device and a real communication device comprises using thereal communication device as an interface between the simulatedcommunication device and a user.
 16. The method of claim 1 whereincommunicating between the simulated communication device and a realcommunication device comprises determining whether an intended recipientof the communication is a user of the virtual world, determining whetherthe intended recipient is interacting with the virtual world at the timeof the communication, and, if the intended recipient is interacting withthe virtual world at the time of the communication, contacting theintended recipient via a virtual communication device that is simulatedon a real device that the intended recipient is using to interact withthe virtual world.
 17. The method of claim 1 wherein communicatingbetween the simulated communication device and a real communicationdevice comprises determining whether an intended recipient of thecommunication is a user of the virtual world, determining whether theintended recipient is interacting with the virtual world at the time ofthe communication, and, if intended recipient is not interacting withthe virtual world at the time of the communication, leaving a messagewith the intended recipient on a real communication device or asimulated communication device that is simulated on a real device thatthe intended recipient is using to interact with the virtual world. 18.The method of claim 1 wherein communicating between the simulatedcommunication device and a real communication device comprisesdetermining whether an intended recipient of the communication is a userof the virtual world, determining whether the intended recipient isinteracting with the virtual world at the time of the communication,and, if the intended recipient is not interacting with the virtual worldat the time of the communication, contact the intended recipient via areal communication device, wherein the real communication device isconfigured to communicate with other real communication devices via oneor more communication channels that are independent of the virtualworld.
 19. A system for communicating with a virtual world, comprisingone or more processors configured to generate a virtual world, whereinthe virtual world comprises a simulated public space configured tofacilitate interaction among a plurality of users and one or moreprivate spaces, wherein each private space is associated with aparticular user of the plurality of users, the one or more processorsbeing further configured to: simulate a communication device in thevirtual world; and communicate between the simulated communicationdevice and a real communication device.
 20. The system of claim 19wherein the real communication device is configured to communicate withother real communication devices via one or more communication channelsthat are independent of the virtual world.
 21. The system of claim 19wherein the public space is configured to resemble a lobby.
 22. Thesystem of claim 19 wherein one or more of the private spaces include oneor more private spaces configured to resemble an apartment.
 23. Thesystem of claim 19 wherein the simulated communication device is asimulated hand-held communication device.
 24. The system of claim 23wherein the simulated hand-held communication device is a simulatedtelephone, mobile telephone, text message device, email device ortwo-way radio.
 25. The system of claim 19 wherein the real communicationdevice is a real hand-held communication device.
 26. The system of claim25 wherein the real hand-held communication device is a real telephone,mobile telephone, text message device, email device or two-way radio.27. The system of claim 19 wherein the simulated communication device isa simulated telephone configured to communicate with a real telephone.28. The system of claim 19 wherein the simulated communication device isa simulated text messaging device configured to communicate with a realtext messaging device by way of one or more text messages.
 29. Thesystem of claim 19 wherein the simulated communication device isconfigured to: determine whether an intended recipient of acommunication is a user of the virtual world, determine whether theintended recipient is interacting with the virtual world at the time ofthe communication, and, if the intended recipient is interacting withthe virtual world at the time of the communication, contact the intendedrecipient via a simulated communication device that is simulated on areal device that the intended recipient is using to interact with thevirtual world.
 30. The system of claim 19 wherein the simulatedcommunication device is configured to determine whether an intendedrecipient of the communication is a user of the virtual world, determinewhether the intended recipient is interacting with the virtual world atthe time of the communication, and, if the intended recipient is notinteracting with the virtual world at the time of the communication,leave a message with the intended recipient on a real communicationdevice or a simulated communication device that is simulated on a realdevice that the intended recipient is using to interact with the virtualworld.
 31. The system of claim 19 wherein the simulated communicationdevice is configured to determine whether an intended recipient of thecommunication is a user of the virtual world, determine whether theintended recipient is interacting with the virtual world at the time ofthe communication, and, if the intended recipient is not interactingwith the virtual world at the time of the communication, contact theintended recipient via a real communication device, wherein the realcommunication device is configured to communicate with other realcommunication devices via one or more communication channels that areindependent of the virtual world.
 32. The system of claim 19 wherein theone or more processors are further configured to associate an avatarwith a particular user of the virtual world and represent the particularuser's interactions with the virtual world by one or more correspondingactions of the avatar.
 33. The system of claim 19 wherein the one ormore processors are configured such that the real communication canaccess simulated communication device content.
 34. The system of claim19 wherein the virtual world is a three-dimensional virtual world. 35.The system of claim 19 wherein the one or more processors are configuredsuch that the real communication device can be used as an interfacebetween the simulated communication device and a user.
 36. The system ofclaim 19 wherein the one or more processors comprises a cell processor.37. The system of claim 19 wherein the real communication device is atelephone, cellular phone, personal digital assistant, camera, voicerecorder, portable email device, portable internet access device,portable game device or personal computer.
 38. The system of claim 19,further comprising a user interface coupled to the one or moreprocessors, wherein the user interface is configured to facilitateinteraction between the user and the virtual world.